[evolvingconnections] evolving standards for use of camera phones in daily life

http://www.thefeature.com/index.jsp?url=article.jsp?pageid=47795

The Onset of Connected Cameras
By Justin Hall, Aug 13 2003

Now that wireless Western nations are just beginning to agree upon the
proper place to make and receive mobile phone calls, the mobile connected
camera is coming. Where is the proper place to take or distribute a
picture? Awash in phone cameras since the year 2000, Japan has just begun
to wrestle with this problem.

Mobile phones in Japan have taken photos since 2000; in the last few months
they've reached digital camera quality. It's annoying to be overwhelmed or
interrupted by a mobile phone conversation; it's paranoia-inducing to
imagine that anywhere you go anyone around you might be taking your picture
and sending it around the world.
These Internet connected cameras will generate a new and complex series of
social mores, regulations and technological strictures, as we struggle to
adapt to a society where citizens have the power of recording and
surveillance held previously only by groups and institutions.

Sound When They Snap A Shot

Sociologist Mizuko Ito has observed firsthand the development of these
complex techno-social contracts. Ito is a researcher at University of
Southern California and Keio University in Japan. Her recent research
examined mobile messaging amongst Japanese teenagers. She adroitly
described the way they create private space with a daily flurry of short
mail messages. Now she's studying the kind of photos people take and trade
with their mobile phone cameras.

TheFeature caught up with Ito over an IP phone connection from San
Francisco to Tokyo. She pointed out some of the subtle ways that you can
track Japan's reaction to mobile phones. After years of debate and
discussion, rules for phone conduct have become more specific: instead of
"please shut your phone off," signs and announcements now say, "Please
don't talk into your phone." She envisions a similar timetable for sorting
out connected camera issues: "It's going to take five years to create that
combination of social and technological, public and private solutions."

Early fears over mobile phone cameras stem from their anonymity, Ito
observes. Mobile phones are a common sight; it can be difficult to tell if
someone's using a phone to take a picture. Most mobile phone cameras make
some kind of a sound when they snap a shot. Recently, handset manufacturers
in Korea fought a legislative effort to make the sound louder - they said
it would damage sales. Either way, a determined hacker can turn their sound
off, or muffle the speaker.

Ito sees a future for consensual phone camera signaling: "I wonder if
there's going to be some kind of technological shift to demonstrate the
presence of a camera phone. Or to signal that you're using the phone for
one purpose or another. Some phones have a physical function to close the
lens - to resolve the ambiguity about the use of the phone."

There is an ambiguity to mobile phone cameras not only for the people who
loathe being photographed, but also for the people holding the devices.
"Every one knows it's bad to snap pictures up people's skirts," Ito
observes. "They know if they get caught they'll be in trouble." But there's
more of an ethical gray area surrounding photos of property. Is it okay to
take a picture of a hairstyle in a fashion magazine you're browsing in a
bookstore?

Customer Digitization

The first reports of an effort to limit "digital shoplifting" emerged from
Japan last week. Storekeepers were tired of people photographing cool
hairstyles or clothes in magazines and sending the snapshot to their
friends, instead of buying the printed matter.

It's perverse media ecology. The magazine publishers undoubtedly design the
magazines on a computer, using digital content. Then they print it, and put
it on bookstore shelves. Users then filter into the bookstore and use their
mobile phones to selectively re-digitize the content they like so they can
distribute it faster and wider than print allows.

These "shoplifters" are using mobile phones to augment an inefficient means
of content distribution. Arguably, they should be able to get the
magazine's content digitally without having to scan, perhaps off a website
service. It's a pedestrian version of Napster - digitizing media without
permission because it's the most convenient way to share. People want to
use technology to share. Much of the discussion about digital copyright
violations in the West happens under the rubric of "file sharing." But
digital camera use in magazine stands was labeled "digital shoplifting" by
the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association. It was a masterstroke of
publicity, immediately identifying this phenomenon with crime by name.
"Digital shoplifting" adapts the old rules covering property theft for
citizen digitization.

"Everything in public space is available for digital reproduction"

The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association signs posted in bookstores
admonish browsers to "refrain from recording information with
camera-mounted cell phones and other devices." But according to Ito, it's
not just bookstores that have to worry about their contents being digitized
and spread: "A curious unintended outcome [of connected cameras] is that
people are going to be more careful about making things available in
print."

In her forthcoming study, she found that kids who like a particular logo or
celebrity don't necessarily go to a digital downloads site, they take their
own picture of a poster or magazine. Before connected cameras, "the feeling
was that print objects are relatively safe from digital reproduction
because of the hassle of input. People could feel a sense of protection in
that printed form. Now digitization has been so sped up. Everything in
public space is available for digital reproduction." That's likely to have
long-term effects on the licensing and distribution of images.

Undoubtedly there will be laws and rules and signs and censure to control
the over-eager invasive mobile photographers. Perhaps the generation raised
in the midst of connected cameras will expect to be surveilled in this way,
and they won't mind so much.

The right to film and distribute will likely be worked out through a series
of messages. Early in the era of connected cameras, many of those messages
will be printed up and posted on walls. Later messages will be social cues,
as people attune their ears for the sound of a mobile phone camera shutter
and look to see if anything is awry. Someday, mobile camera hardware and
software might negotiate permission to photograph based on context.

Noted Silicon Valley columnist and explorer of the new journalism landscape
Dan Gillmor wrote this recently on his weblog: "Cameras will soon be
impossible to see. They'll be in our glasses, our clothing and eventually
in our very bodies..." If millions of cameras are to be wielded by every
human or institution, then we'll have little choice but to expect that
we're being watched all the time. Then we can only hope that our
embarrassing moments will be lost in an overwhelming torrent of digital
images.

Justin Hall has been writing about digital culture for over a decade now,
mostly on his web site Links.net. He splits his time between Japan and the
United States, west of the Mississippi.

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